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Jared Kushner's lawyer emphasized that Kushner (pictured) "had no contacts" with Wikileaks and said he had batted down suggestions that the Trump campaign meet with officials claiming to represent Russia. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Senate panel relaxes deadline for Kushner to hand over documents

The Senate Judiciary Committee won't hold Jared Kushner to a Monday deadline the panel initially set for President Donald Trump’s son-in-law to turn over documents for its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a letter before Thanksgiving that Kushner, a top aide to Trump, failed to provide a series of documents the committee requested — including one that they said referenced a "back door overture" by the Russians and another that hinted at pre-election contact with WikiLeaks. They raised the specter of issuing a subpoena if Kushner failed to produce them this week.

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But Kushner's lawyer Abbe Lowell said the committee changed its tune after they spoke over the week of Thanksgiving.

"Mr. Kushner's counsel and staff from both the Majority and Minority spoke last week to go over the Committee's requests and a schedule for producing additional information," Lowell said in a statement. "There is no current deadline as both the Committee and Mr. Kushner's counsel are working in good faith to produce whatever else may be responsive and relevant to the Committee's inquiry."

A Grassley spokesman confirmed by email that the committee didn't expect to receive the materials on Monday. "However, Mr. Kushner’s attorney is cooperating with the committee and we are in ongoing discussions to address the committee’s requests," the spokesman said.

A Feinstein aide said the discussions between the committee and Lowell are ongoing.

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In the Nov. 16 letter to Lowell, Grassley and Feinstein said the responses to earlier document requests to Kushner omitted several exchanges that they had received from other sources.

“Other parties have produced September 2016 email communications to Mr. Kushner concerning WikiLeaks, which Mr. Kushner then forwarded to another campaign official,” they wrote. “Such documents should have been produced ... but were not."

The next day, Lowell responded with his own letter to express "surprise and disappointment" that the lawmakers had released their request to the media, saying they hadn't contacted him privately first. He also said that the documents they described as "missing" in their letter were in fact "not missing at all." Rather, he said he had simply supplied the Judiciary Committee with the same documents he turned over to the intelligence committees for their parallel investigation.

Lowell also emphasized that Kushner "had no contacts" with WikiLeaks and said he had batted down suggestions that the Trump campaign meet with officials claiming to represent Russia.